Tutor
by Shadow of a Forgotten Ghost
Summary: A bit cliche, but Kagome has to help Inuyasha pass his classes and he helps her with math. The tiniest bit of romance if you squint and hold it sideways. Rated K plus due to Inu's foul mouth. Human high school AU.


**Well, this story just came into my head recently and I figured 'what the heck?'. So I typed it up. Some of the stuff is inaccurate, I know, but just kinda go with it. And if the grammar's horrible, it's 'cause I typed it when I was tired. It could've been better with a bit more interaction between characters, it could've went a bit farther, but I'm no good with this type of thing. *shrugs* Oh, and btw, since this is a human AU, Inu is in his human form. Just as a warning.**

* * *

Kagome had always been horrible with math. Ask her anything about Shakespeare or other literature, she had the answer. Had problems understanding biology? Kagome was the go-to person. She even understood foreign languages as if they were her first. But math was just an indecipherable mess for her. The homework was horrid, and Kagome often stared at it for several hours before practically throwing the textbook onto the floor and running her hands through her hair in irritation.

Inuyasha, however, was the exact opposite. He was often considered the poster child of a bad student. He didn't understand the complexities and delicate symbolism of literature, didn't bother learning any sciences (being more with concerned with what was happening around him and not how), and the only thing that he got out of any language were the foul words that he loved to show off to everyone. But, he did have one redeeming quality. His math skills were incredible. It was the one class he excelled in.

How did these two total opposites meet each other? Well, it just so happened that Kagome was in all of Inuyasha's core classes. All of Kagome's teachers were getting sick of Inuyasha's rude antics and bad grades (with the exception of a certain math instructor), so one day, Kagome was shouldered with the impossible task of tutoring Inuyasha.

Of course, Kagome didn't take well to the news. She had just been given a long assignment in Algebra today, and she was going to need all of her attention on that homework this evening. All of her other homework was already done, finished in her study hall at the end of the day. In fact, that was when she was told the bad news.

Old Kaede sidled into Kagome's study hall, causing all of the students present to glance up. She was Kagome's current Biology teacher, so Kagome was surprised when Kaede called her over. She was fairly certain that she had aced the test, so why did Kaede want to see her?

"Would you come with me, please, Kagome?" Kaede asked, looking annoyed for some reason. Confused, Kagome followed her into the hallway, where she saw a sulking Inuyasha leaning against the wall. She shared classes with him, and knew that the teachers were always harping on him about his late work and horrid grades. Kagome still didn't see what he had to do with her until Kaede started talking again.

"Kagome, this is Inuyasha," Kaede introduced unnecissarily. "All of us teachers are at our wit's end trying to get him to understand, so we came to a final solution: we'd have our best student tutor him outside of school. If this doesn't work, he'll fail another year of school."

Kagome remained silent for a second. She didn't know what to say, other than that she declined. That Algebra homework was going to require her full attention. Besides, Inuyasha always acted like a jerk in class. Kagome wasn't a highly patient person. She wasn't sure she could handle tutoring Inuyasha. "With all due respect, I can't. I need to focus on my math homework. I won't be any help in that area and I need to focus on my own grades in that class. Wouldn't Hojo be a better choice?"

"Hojo, unfortunately, seems to have come down with a serious illness (how's that for irony?) and will not be back to school for several weeks. Besides, Inuyasha doesn't need help for math."

"Oh. Well, what about Ayumi? She's pretty good with her classes. I'm sure she'd like to help. I'm sorry, but I have math homework I'm really worried about tonight."

"I'm afraid that you've been charged with tutoring him," Kaede said with finality, not budging on the matter. "He'll be visiting you after school for at least the next two weeks. If an improvement is not shown, it'll be proof that he's not putting forth any effort in school and he will be kicked out. Good luck, Kagome," the old woman said before walking away.

"Wha-? Oh, you've gotta be kidding me!" Kagome cried, stomping her foot in anger.

"Keh. What're you complaining about, wench? I'm the one who's gotta deal with you," the dark-haired prick said, still leaning against the wall. Just as Kagome was about to retort, the bell signalling the end of the day rang and Kagome stomped back into the study hall to collect her books.

Inuyasha met her outside of the school gates, waiting impatiently. Kagome blew right past him, pointedly ignoring him as he fell into pace behind her. They walked in silence all the way to the shrine that was Kagome's home. "You live in a shrine?" Inuyasha asked, laughing slightly.

"Is there something funny about that?" Kagome snapped, whipping around to face Inuyasha.

"I just imagined some middle-class house, not a fuckin' shrine," he elaborated, still chuckling to himself.

"If you don't like it, you can just go home," Kagome told him venomously.

"I was just kidding around, bitch," Inuyasha growled, his amusement gone as his hands buried themselves in his pockets. "Let's just get this over with."

Kagome walked into her house. "I'm home," she called out tiredly, kicking off her shoes. Inuyasha was pulling his off when Kagome's mother walked into the hallway.

"Hello, dear. How was school?"

"It was fine..." All of a sudden, Kagome's mother caught sight of Inuyasha and her eyes widened.

"Oh, my Kagome! You finally brought a boy home!" she squealed excitedly.

Kagome resisted the urge to roll her eyes with great difficulty. "It's not like that, Mama. I'm just going to be tutoring Inuyasha for a while."

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Inuyasha," Kagome's mother greeted with a warm smile. She directed her next statement to Kagome. "I'll prepare an early dinner, so he can eat with us if he wants."

"Okay, thank you, Mama," Kagome replied as her mom left for the kitchen. "Come on, we'll study in the living room." She led him to the small living room, where Souta and her grandfather were watching TV together.

She walked in with Inuyasha close behind. She kind of wanted to sneak out before her little brother and grandfather noticed the boy behind her, but Souta happened to look up and see the two standing awkwardly just inside the living room entrance. "Hey, Kagome!" he waved.

"Welcome home, Kagome," her grandfather said. "Who's that with you?"

"This is just Inuyasha. I'll be tutoring him for a while."

Before any further conversation could be made, Kagome dragged Inuyasha out of the living room. "Hey, where're you dragging me, wench? Didn't you say we were gonna study in the living room?"

"Change of plans. We'll just study up in my room. Don't you dare get any wrong impressions," Kagome hissed. "I just don't want you to be distracted by the TV, or we'll be here all night. Plus, I don't want you teaching my little brother all of your bad habits."

Inuyasha just keh'd and fell quiet again. When they were in her room, Kagome flung her backpack to the ground and told Inuyasha to sit at the desk. "Is there anything in particular you want to start with?"

"Nope."

"Well, let's just start with English then," Kagome said. She pulled out the English book and opened it to the appropriate page before slapping it down in front of Inuyasha. "We'll start with something simple. Translate that sentence there for me."

Inuyasha just stared blankly at the page, then back at her.

"Well?"

"You honestly expect me to understand what that shit says?"

"Ugh!" Kagome yelled, already frustrated. "Is there anything you get out of that sentence?"

"Somethin' about a dog," Inuyasha offered. "That's about it."

"Alright, here. Look after the word 'dog'. What's the word after it?"

Inuyasha scrunched up his face in concentration. "Running?"

"Right. So now you know that a dog is running. What else do you see? Anything that seems familiar. It's a simple sentence, so there's only one more part you need to point out."

"And it's in a...park?" Inuyasha said in askance after a few minutes and searching through the back glossary.

"Right. Most of the sentences are like this one, so do you think you can do those by yourself for the most part from now on? I need to get started on my homework," Kagome said sharply, already pulling her textbook out without Inuyasha's answer.

"Yeah," he grunted, leaning over the desk.

Well, that was surprising. He wasn't fighting her as much as she thought he would. Shrugging, Kagome sat down on her bed and opened her math book. This chapter was on square roots. All Kagome had to do was look at it and she got a headache. It was impossible!

Her pencil wrote out numbers one through twenty-five on her paper. That was about all she wrote down. The rest of the time, she rested the graphite tip against the paper and waited for an answer to present itself.

Inuyasha must've heard her sigh several times over the next few minutes because after Kagome sighed (for the tenth time in five minutes by his count), he growled and spun around. "What the hell's your problem?"

"This math is impossible!" Kagome cried, her face meeting her hands.

"The homework from today?" Inuyasha asked rudely. "It was an easy day. I had it done in five minutes."

"Yeah, and it was probably all wrong, too," Kagome muttered.

"Wanna bet, wench?" Inuyasha practically snared, walking over towards her. "Here, I'll show you. Remember what the teacher said earlier today? What is a square?"

"Um..."

"It's the product of a number multiplied by itself," Inuyasha answered for her, seeing her blank stare. "A square root is the opposite. It's the number that was multiplied. Take number one, for instance." He gestured to the problem, which had the number eighty-one under a radical symbol. "It's more a memorization thing. What's one times one?"

"One."

"What's two times two?"

"Four."

"And what's three times three?"

"Nine..."

"One, four, and nine are the squares. One, two, and three are the square roots," Inuyasha pointed out. "Just keep going down the list until you either hit the number or the one above. Most of the problems are even squares, but a couple aren't. In the case where it isn't, you find the closest number, then use a calculator to find the exact answer."

"So the answer to number one is nine?" Kagome asked, fairly certain she understood now. It didn't seem all that difficult now. Why had she been freaking out again?

"Yep."

"Huh. That's not hard at all."

"Keh. See? I told you, only a few minutes."

"How have you been doing on your English?" Kagome asked. "Are you done yet?"

"Almost." Kagome got to her feet and went to inspect Inuyasha's translations. Other than minor grammar errors, they were all pretty accurate. Although she did know that Inuyasha had flipped back to the glossary several more times than should've been necessary.

She spent some time watching Inuyasha finish the sentences, then helped him fix the grammatical errors. He forgot certain placements of prepositional phrases, which threw him off a bit. Otherwise, he knew what he was doing. Why did he need tutoring? It seemed like he'd have an easy time with English if he put enough effort forward.

The next up was Literature. They had to read Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ (translated to Japanese) and be prepared to discuss some of the literary devices used to reveal Hamlet's true feelings. Kagome pointed out some of the soliloquies for Inuyasha to read and went back to her math homework. It didn't take her long to finish now that she knew that she was doing.

Once Inuyasha forced his way through the tangled writing style that Shakespeare had loved so much, Kagome and he discussed some of the things going on. There were times that Inuyasha understood something backwards, but he got the gist thanks to Kagome's explanation and her kind lending of helpful cliff notes.

And what formerly seemed like a mountain of work was finished before the two were called down to dinner. Much to Inuyasha's delight, it was ramen. Kagome had never seen anyone more enthusiastic over a bowl of ramen before. It made her laugh at Inuyasha's childish antics. Souta and Inuyasha hit it off immediately,jabbering off about some game they were both familiar with. Kagome's grandpa was amused that Inuyasha was interested in the history of ramen, which he was more than willing to oblige to the teen. Kagome's mother just watched the scene, flashing a warm smile at her daughter.

In the prescence of her family, Inuyasha seemed a bit tamer, a little calmer, more relaxed. He looked happy, unlike any other time that Kagome had seen him. It made her warm up to him, just a little.

And so they fell into a comfortable routine for the next two weeks. Inuyasha walked home with Kagome and did his homework at her house. Even without much help on Kagome's part, Inuyasha was quickly raising his grades, proving that it was just a lack of effort holding him back. Now, it was more like the tutoring was for Kagome and her math homework.

Inuyasha explained everything so clearly, it was easy for Kagome to understand what was previously squiggles and numbers on a page. His help especially came in handy when it came to quadratic functions. Kagome had enough problems with graphing normal linear equations. Quadratic functions were far beyond her meager understanding.

Fortunately, Inuyasha pointed out that you had to walk to the elevator before you could ride it up. That helped Kagome remember that she had to follow the x-axis before going up the y to plot the points. Then he also told her how to find the vertex of the equation. After that, it was just a matter of plugging in values.

Kagome couldn't remember when Inuyasha suddenly started calling her by her name rather than wench or bitch. She also couldn't remember when they started to talk like old friends in school. It earned her squeals and raised eyebrows from her best friends and Inuyasha's friends (she didn't even know he had friends until she met them) seemed dubious that someone could put up with him. All of the teachers just seemed relieved that Inuyasha stopped causing trouble in class.

Two weeks passed too quickly. Since Inuyasha's grades had improved dramatically over the two weeks, there was no reason for him to continue the tutoring. Kagome felt oddly sad over it. She shouldn't have. He was a pretty insufferable guy with a loud mouth. Still, Souta was going to miss his idol coming over to visit every evening. And Kagome would grudgingly admit that she was going to miss him too. Despite being so gruff, he had occasional cute moments, like when he helped her with math. He didn't have to, but he insisted upon helping her anyway.

Now that he no longer needed her, there wasn't a reason for him to keep being friendly towards her. Sure enough, he didn't speak to her all day at school. He basically went back to his usual rude self in class, too. But he didn't slack off like before.

Kagome felt hurt that he didn't want to talk to her anymore and couldn't focus in her Algebra class that day when she should have been. Now she had an assignment that she didn't know how to do, something involving logarithims. Inuyasha could've explained it to her properly, but now that they were back to being strangers, Kagome was back in the dark. She threw an impatient glance at the clock.

There was still a whole half-hour left to the class. Kagome sighed and slouched forward in her chair until her forehead banged into the desk. It was going to be a long night.

Her head flopped over so she stared out of the window. She remembered a few nights back when she and Inuyasha were hanging out in her bedroom. They were laughing over some stupid mistake she'd made while trying to solve a problem, and all she could think about was the cute smile he'd had on his face at the time. His long black hair framed his face in a thick curtain, and his dark grey eyes had an amused sparkle to them.

It was at that moment that Kagome realized that she had started to grow to like having Inuyasha around. Hanging out with him made her life just a little bit brighter, something to look forward to than constant shopping and shallow amusement that she had with Ayumi, Eri and Yuka.

Due to his rude personality, Kagome never saw him as attractive before, but ever since she started spending more time with him, that opinion had changed.

She groaned and shook the thought from her mind. It was too late. Those times together were gone. Inuyasha was only nice to her because he needed help with his classes. Now he was back to his normal life, and she wasn't in it. There was no use trying to dwell on it.

-_-; -_-; -_-;

Inuyasha irritably messed with his pencil during study hall, staring at the English homework in front of him. Thanks to Kagome's coaching, he knew _how_ to do it. He just didn't want to. All he could do was fidget and hope the class would end quickly so he could go home.

His best friend Miroku leaned over to him. "Are you going to see that Kagome girl again today?" he asked, waggling his eyebrows at Inuyasha suggestively.

"No, the two weeks of tutoring is over," Inuyasha answered curtly.

"Oh yeah right. You can't honestly expect me to believe that's what you were doing all that time by her house," Miroku said, rolling his eyes.

Inuyasha gave his best friend a glare that clearly told him to piss off and stop being so damn perverted. "Yes, I do, actually. And now that the two weeks is up, there's no reason for her to talk to me anymore."

"But you still want her to," Miroku stated, his face growing serious. "Why don't you just go talk to her?"

"Keh. She wouldn't want to hang around me. She's little Miss Perfect, and I'm a trouble child. Why would she still want to talk to me?"

"That's not what Sango tells me," Miroku said.

"Yeah, that's probably because she's too busy calling you a pervert," Inuyasha muttered.

Miroku ignored him and pressed on. "Apparently Kagome's been pretty upset all today. Wanna guess the reason?"

"A lot of math homework?"

Miroku shot him a glare for once that shut Inuyasha up. "No. She's been talking about you all day. She was worried that since you didn't need her help anymore, that you'd stop talking to her because she's not worthy of your attention or something crazy like that."

"What? She didn't say that!" Inuyasha denied. There was no way she could've said that! He was the one that didn't deserve to talk to her. He'd assumed that she'd be happy to get rid of him. After all, he hadn't been the nicest to her at first and she deserved a lot better.

"I personally don't understand it, but apparently she's very worried over it," Miroku continued. "So...are you still planning on not seeing her tonight?"

The bell rang and he got out of his seat. "Be sure to tell me all about it tomorrow!" Miroku cried, already out of the classroom.

"What the hell," Inuyasha muttered, gathering his books together. "Damn pervert."

As if to highlight his thoughts, there was a loud slap resounding from outside the classroom. "PERVERT!" Sango must've been waiting for Miroku outside. He was going to die young if he didn't control that hand of his.

-_-; -_-; -_-;

Kagome was relieved when she stepped inside the house. Walking home with Eri, Ayumi, and Yuka had been hard. They kept asking why Inuyasha hadn't been talking to her all day. Kagome tried explaining to them that their relationship came out necessity, she and him weren't really friends, but they just didn't get it.

And though she would never admit it, Kagome thought they were more than just tutor and struggling student. She and Inuyasha often spent a lot of time hanging out together even after all the homework was done. Sometimes they'd watch a movie. Inuyasha would even be sweet enough to play a video game with Souta occasionally. It was actually kinda cute since Inuyasha really sucked at them.

But now those times were over. Souta wouldn't ever get to win another game, and Kagome would never able to see Inuyasha's smiling face again. All that she had to look forward to was breaking her running record on how late she stayed up doing homework.

"I'm home," she called tiredly, really wanting to just take a nap and forget about her homework and Inuyasha.

Souta ran up to the entry hallway, excited for another round of gaming with Inuyasha, only to find Kagome alone. "Hey, Kagome. Where's Inuyasha?" he asked, trying to look out of the door's decorative glass to see if his idol was hiding outside.

"Remember?" Kagome sighed, not anxious to have this conversation. "I don't have to tutor him anymore. He's gone back to his normal life and he probably won't be visiting."

Poor Souta was devastated. He ran out of the room, not crying, but pretty close. Kagome just felt worse for making her brother upset like that. She just crawled up the stairs to her room and dropped onto the matress.

-_-; -_-; -_-;

Inuyasha had been wandering around, trying to decide what to do, and ended up right in front of the shrine where Kagome lived without realizing it. He stopped dead in his tracks, his foot hovering over the first step. He'd came to her house every day directly after school for so long that it was just automatic.

Now that he was actually to her house, he really wanted to turn around and walk away. What would he say? It wasn't like he visited a lot of people on a normal basis just for the hell of it. Inuyasha didn't even know what to talk about with Kagome. When she was tutoring him, the topic would start out being homework and then naturally changed into something completely different. It was easier then. All Inuyasha had to do was just go with the flow.

Before he could bail, he forced himself forward.

-_-; -_-; -_-;

Kagome heard the knock on the door, but chose to ignore it. Her matress was just too comfortable and she knew that getting up meant eventually facing the evil math homework sitting in her backpack. Besides, her mom could already be heard pulling open the door and greeting someone with great enthusiasm.

"Hey, Kagome!" her mother called. "Someone's here to see you!"

"Who is it?" Kagome yelled back. She really didn't want to get up.

There was no answer, so Kagome pulled herself away from her comfy bed and shuffled down the stairs. That's when she saw him. "Inuyasha!" she cried, running up to him and pulling him into a hug without thinking about it. "I didn't think you'd come anymore since you don't need my help."

"Keh. Someone's gotta keep you from failing Algebra" was his reply. If Kagome would've looked up, she would've seen the slight blush creeping across Inuyasha's face.


End file.
